Thursday, August 07, 2008

In lieu of a post, I will now put up something far more worth your while. I think.

Despite being practically unknown, the following post by me reads like a chapter from the memoirs of famous persons.

April is the cruellest month, averred T. S. Eliot. Apart from being grammatically wrong, this is also wholly untrue. April is a fine month. So we have now established that Eliot was a liar and poor at grammar. That being as it is, April 2008 was a good month when three of us, Sharath, Harish and I, decided to peg our wavering bottoms down to the ground and pursue our ambitions of being on the Internet. Yes, so that we could tell our parents proudly, "Look, ma, I'm on teh interwebs! Lolz!!!1" With this fierce ambition burning in our minds and loins, we shot our first video, a fake news broadcast consisting of the following headlines:-

"ISRO abandons plan to launch satellites in the future; to host children's parties instead.""Army drops bullets for biscuits -- new oatmeal-flavoured cookies is forces' secret weapon. Old soldiers complain of discrimination.""Star footballer caught in yet another sex scandal. This time, with a particularly luscious football.""A new movie, The second sense, sweeps the box office. It's tagline 'I see deaf people' becomes the nation's catchphrase.""Plus, an in-depth interview with the director of The second sense, Girish Kasaravalli. We ask him why he felt the torrid item number by Mallika Sherawat was necessary."

We did almost all of these(the Kasaravalli interview and the trailer of The Second Sense, we couldn't do. It would have been a funky trailer, though. Set to the music of Jonny Quest. With things like "One man decides he has had enough." "With an unexpected guest appearance by Ben Kingsley." "He commits the unspeakable crime. Again. Will someone please stop this idiot?" said in that deep, movie-trailer voice.) and put the videos up online.

Nothing happened.

So we decided to organise the videos into a channel. Inspired by Queen Elizabeth II("Dinku" to her friends), who has her own Youtube channel, we created one for ourselves too. When deciding on names for the channel, we argued much as parents of a newborn argue over their offspring's nomenclature. Finally, superior persuasive logic(you know whose it was) won and we had a channel:-

Days and weeks rolled by and we put up some more videos. Being organised in one place had its benefits. But we grew selfish. We wanted our own website. We were going to link back to Youtube for the videos, of course, but the website would be out of our pockets. Inexpensive domain registration and hosting sites were found, contacted and paid. Finally, we had a website.

All right. High five. No? OK.

Now all that was left was to decorate the site and make it all messed up with "Content Management Software." Despite all resources available for wrecking the site, Messrs. Harish N Kumar and Sharath Kowligi managed to make it a rather nice-looking one. Much hard work was put into it by them, and solely by them, and an organisation of content was achieved. PHPMelody was used to good effect by these gentlemen and, despite no assistance from technical and astrological wizards like Arvind SV, Karthik Dwarakanath, Swaroop Ramachandra and myself, they sorted the site and the subsequent issues out. As a result, we have our very own website, atleast for the next two years:-

Despite the name being the Kannada word for a commercial sex worker(or an illegitimate child, we're not sure), the content is mainly PG-13, with the PG requirement due to a happy lack of awareness in children of U R Anantamurthy, Pratap Simha, Bhutan's altruistic king and Robert Mugabe's electoral 'win.' These are some of the things we've touched upon in some of the sketches we've done. We have also spoofed Ravi Belagere's "Crime diary" and S K Jain's random predictions in one of our videos entitled "Yamana solu." There are very good impressions of L K Advani in some other videos, performed ably by Harish. Most of the videos are in Kannada. Some are in English. Don't be pretentious, watch everything.

In a heartfelt plea, I now implore you, the reader, to go and watch the videos on the site and the Youtube channel. Let us know what you think on the blog:-

The blog initially tracked the development of the site, but gave up soon and moved on to fake news. We will provide updates there about interesting developments in our lives, however. These have been few and far between, but we'll let you keep track of those.

[el] Mindry is our group, I say. By 'group,' I mean three-four guys. We are humble and modest. But our goals are noble and thinking simple. We wish to overrun the government of Bhutan, in the short term. With as few firearms as possible.

[a million different people] Heh, yeah, I forgot the "xoxoxo." And aren't we all attention whores? Like the ancient Upanishad saying, "He who blogs publicly seeks the attention and approval of his peers. Like a streetwalker without shame."

You are far ahead of your times, as is proved by your discovery of Mindry.in even before the shameless plug. Like Galileo. Or some other, more relevant, analogy. Congratulations, and thanks.

Oh you had oye-votijeet-chalo-dance-party-chalen Dinku fraands? Must have been a nice time, childhood.

He was a nice man, actually. We've just gone way out on the caricature. We received news that his daughter had watched the videos and been much offended. We apologise humbly to her at this juncture, but plead inability to stop.

[aliya] Yeah, you weren't bluffing. Thanks again for putting me up there. I was a quasi-celebrity for an entire day. My family was so proud. I'm not kidding. My mother wasn't even this happy when I was born.

Family blog? A new concept in blogging. Continue. When you do decide to make it public, do let me know.

While most of our videos are in Kannada, some of them are in English. You can look at those. The English ones are, in no particular order:- 1. Takeover Today2. Expelled : Somnath and friends3. An interview with Shatrugna4. Random passerby addresses the nation5. Ancient celebrity interview - Vedavyasa

Lol...i watched some of the videos. Crazy. But you know what's weird, 'bald cruelty' dude...looks/talks exactly like the guy who hosts 'Around the World in 80 plates' on NDTV Goodtimes...it's damn weird...:P

Also, what shit...you're mum was seriously proud? :P

Yes, Family blog new concept...when one has half the family around the world. Best way to get a sense of how we spend our weekends and such.

[aliya] Bald cruelty looks like him? Yeah, I guess he does. His parents say he's adopted, so you never know. The two might be related.

Heh, why does my mom being proud surprise you? No, actually, she didn't cry with pride or anything. She was all "All right! Nice!"

I'm sorry that your family is halfway around the world and not here for the all-important occasion of......drumrolls......Varalakshmi Vratam.

:) shameless plug? I checked out the MTV version. Purists might be offended by this interpretation of the national anthem. I was more offended by the lead singer's hair.

In the song, when he sang the first two lines, I was all "What the fuck?" Then the instruments kicked in along with the rest of the group and I liked it. The bass is kick-ass. Very 'Janis Joplin mood' inducing.

I suppose this is our way of doing with the national anthem what Hendrix did with theirs. A laudable effort. Convey my congrats to the team.